Tag: Crime in the United States

Only idiotic progressives think that paying lawless people not to commit crimes is a good idea. America is fundamentally being transformed. I guess like the town leaders of Afghanistan, the leadership of DC has opted to pay off the warlords to not loot them. What could go wrong with this proposal? I think, if you base it on historical events in the western world, the people that will be fleeced to pay for this brilliant idea already have a name for this practice they can use: Danegeld. You can’t make up this level of stupid, I tell you.

Let’s not pretend that Obama did anything but lie that day he said there was not a smidgen of corruption in that IRS scandal he claims is made up as well. It takes some special kind of gall to lie about not using powerful and unrestrained federal agencies to target your political opponents, but it goes to a whole new level once they no longer even try to hide the fact that they will heavily rely on this sort of abuse to compensate for people wanting to hold them responsible for this sort of lawless and corrupt behavior.

Politics: In the wake of the IRS targeting scandal, which included groups that already had tax exemptions, vulnerable Democrats ask the agency with the power to tax to use that power to destroy their opposition in 2014. The fundamental transformation of the United States into a banana republic, where government power is used to suppress political opposition, has evolved from a hidden campaign targeting the Tea Party and other conservative groups to an open attempt to suppress free speech by changing the definition of what constitutes political activity. It’s an attempt to define conservative political speech out of existence.

The administration cover story — that prior to the 2012 election the sudden increase in the number of such groups applying for tax-exempt status was the reason applications were delayed — has been blown apart by Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich. His Ways and Means Committee found that the groups targeted already had tax exemptions and that 100% of the groups that were targeted with an audit were on the right. Now, Senate Democrats who voted for ObamaCare and parroted President Obama’s lie of the year are asking the IRS to ensure that if they like their Senate seats they can keep their Senate seats. They want the IRS to be a campaign wing of the Democratic Party.

Leading the IRS call is Sen. Charles Schumer, N.Y., the Senate Democrats’ chief political strategist. “The Tea Party elites gained extraordinary influence by being able to funnel millions of dollars into campaigns with ads that distort the truth and attack government,” Schumer said in remarks at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Sharing that belief are vulnerable Democrats such as Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas. He argues the IRS has power over such groups that engage in what he calls quasi-political activity. In reality, such groups are merely people organizing to petition for the redress of grievances, which include reckless spending, oppressive taxation and regulation, and, yes, ObamaCare.

When the democrats called the Tea Party terrorists, then proceeded to hold training for military entities where these people were acting like terrorists, they meant it. Anyone that stands in the way of the left’s agenda and hold on power is a terrorist and obviously evil, a threat to the state, and the left thinks it is fine for them to use the government they control to target them. Let’s not pretend that these people are doing anything but engaging in criminal activity for their own benefit anymore, please. There is no defending this shit.

We should all learn how to spell banana republic, because we are living in one.

The one good thing I figured Barack Obama would do as President was go after the shysters in the mortgage industry. Surely a Democrat as liberal as Obama would make sure that those who aided and abetted mortgage fraud would be punished, right? And last year — coincidentally, right before the election — they announced that they had brought 530 cases representing over 73,000 fraudulent mortgages and a billion in lost home value. It was just the tip of an awful iceberg, but it was something.

The Justice Department made a long-overdue disclosure late Friday: Last year when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder boasted about the successes that a high-profile task force racked up pursuing mortgage fraud, the numbers he trumpeted were grossly overstated.

We’re not talking small differences here. Originally the Justice Department said 530 people were charged criminally as part of a year-long initiative by the multi-agency Mortgage Fraud Working Group. It now says the actual figure was 107 — or 80 percent less. Holder originally said the defendants had victimized more than 73,000 American homeowners. That number was revised to 17,185, while estimates of homeowner losses associated with the frauds dropped to $95 million from $1 billion.

The government restated the statistics because it got caught red-handed by a couple of nosy reporters. Last October, two days after Holder first publicized the numbers, Phil Mattingly and Tom Schoenberg of Bloomberg News broke the story that some of the cases included in the Justice Department’s tally occurred before the initiative began in October 2011. At least one was filed more than two years before President Barack Obama took office.

It will surprise no one who reads this blog that the Justice Department used every tactic short of extraordinary rendition to evade reporters’ questions about the program. When pressed for details of the arrests and prosecutions, they stalled delayed and obfuscating until … get this … after the election.

Oh, and they’ve done it before:

This was the second time, mind you, that Holder’s Justice Department had pulled a stunt like this. In December 2010, Holder held a press conference to tout a supposed sweep by the president’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force called “Operation Broken Trust.” (The mortgage-fraud program was part of the same task force.) As with the mortgage-fraud initiative, Broken Trust wasn’t actually a sweep. All the Justice Department did was lump together a bunch of small-fry, penny-ante fraud cases that had nothing to do with one another. Then it held a press gathering.

At least on that occasion, the Justice Department promptly provided me with a list of the defendants’ names and case details when I asked for them. That is how I was able to determine for a December 2010 column that the government’s Broken Trust numbers were inflated. Among the handful of cases on the list that I spot-checked, one defendant was sentenced to probation before the operation’s supposed start date. Another person on the list had no record of criminal charges. Other cases had nothing to do with any actions by the task force. The Justice Department still hasn’t restated the Broken Trust numbers — even though those statistics clearly were in error, too.

And, just in case you’re wondering about the brokers who piled fraudulent mortgages into tottering piles of securities shit and the ratings agencies that gave those tottering piles of shit AAA ratings: they have not been held responsible either.

Holder is setting records of lies and obfuscations on every issue imaginable. From Fast and Furious to mortgage fraud, he consistently and continuously misleads the American public. And yet when the Republicans tried to cite for contempt (for lying his ass off about F&F), they were branded as anti-Obama-crazed maniacs. And the DOJ is just a fraction of the lies spewed by this Administration on the subject of the law, from claiming they are winding down the War on Drugs while they ramp it up to the head of NSA lying to Congress with a straight face.

So you’ll forgive me if I take today’s announcement of changes to the War on Drugs with some salt. I love the idea of not charging low-level drug offenders with crimes that invoke harsh minimum sentences. But I don’t trust these assholes to actually do it. What I trust them to do is, shortly before the 2014 election, announce that they’ve overhauled or War on Drugs and kept non-violent people out of prison while they continue to do it.

Holder has earned that distrust. And that distrust is the biggest reason why he shouldn’t be Attorney General any more. Respect for the Rule of Law is a critical component to any functioning society. Holder has brought the Rule of Law into contempt. Enough of this.

Mother Jones just published an “investigation” of mass shootings and came to the conclusion that they are rising as gun ownership rises. I look at it here. Long story short: it’s complete bullshit. The tell is that they are drawing conclusions about civilian ownership of guns — but include the Fort Hood incident, which involved a military man committing an act of terrorism on a military base.